The Sims 4 Is Adding Custom Pronouns At Last

ign.com:

Over the years, The Sims series has been praised for including diverse character representation far beyond what most other AAA gaming franchises had available.

The Sims has allowed same-sex relationships since its 2000 debut, and has actively worked to improve options around same-sex marriage, cultural and racial diversity, gender representation, and more ever since. And today, a free update will add custom pronouns and improve players’ ability to see themselves within The Sims even further.

Currently, the way The Sims 4 works is that Sims are assigned a pronoun based on a binary gender system. During Create-A-Sim, players must designate a Sim as either male (he/him pronouns) or female (she/her). They’re able to customize further from there, with factors such as whether a Sim can become pregnant, their body type and physical appearance, and clothing choices made independent from the initial male/female selection. But players nonetheless have been locked into a binary gender system for all of the narration in The Sims 4 until now.

With the help of GLAAD and the It Gets Better Project, Maxis has implemented a new feature allowing players to determine a Sim’s pronouns as part of Create-A-Sim, right at the start when they input their Sim’s name.

Players will be able to either select she/her, they/them, he/him, or create a custom set that will fill in for all that Sim’s narration. The custom option has fields to input pronouns for the subjective, objective, possessive dependent, possessive independent, and reflexive forms, and includes sample sentences in case grammar terminology isn’t your forte.

The addition of customizable pronouns shouldn’t be surprising to The Sims 4 community, as Maxis has been transparent for months now